A More Accurate Red Vs. Blue Map

XKCD illustrates the map based on Population Distribution, which seems to show much better the nature of our population. Way different than the maps that report by County Results as you can see below. (Click the maps for larger images.)

holygod Please just admit that had this went the other way, (which I believe I remember you saying it might before the election) with Clinton winning the EC and Trump the popular you would not be complaining.

trimble You want a simpler example of why the electoral college sucks? There are states where the electors are not bound to follow the will of the people. The entire state could vote for Team A, and the electors could choose Team B instead.

trimble I would be complaining that the electoral college was ridiculous and needs to be replaced, but thanking God it was in place to prevent the country the daily embarrassment of a trump presidency.

trimble I can't speak for HolyGod, but even if the person I voted for won, ultimately my vote was still wasted, and never had a chance of mattering. Anyone who doesn't live in a swing state should hate this system.

trimble I am sure their is a statistical definition out there some where, but I go by feel. If one party has a population that is larger then the other enough so that the likely winning side thinks "I don't need to worry about voting, we'll win anyway" and the losing side thinks "why bother voting we can't win anyway" Then they are not a swing state.

It's the same every time... no matter who wins, the other side cries about how the EC is unfair. We can all disagree on whether it is unfair or not, but the fact is that it is what's in place, and belly-aching about it after your candidate lost makes you look whiny. If anyone is really that upset about it, go do something about it. Has anyone tried to change the EC in recent times? I would guess so, but the movement to do so was so small that it could get no traction. Probably because it is ultimately incredibly fair, at least from a more universal perspective. Individually, no, it doesn't seem reasonable that the vote of someone in Wyoming has more pull than someone in CA. But cultural tendencies in regions that are very populated should not decide elections for the whole of the country. That would be unreasonable and unfair.

cjeffblanchr "no matter who wins"? How so? The electoral college has never worked to a Democrat's advantage. A Democrat has never lost the popular vote and won the presidency. Republicans have done it 2 of the past 5 elections. Republicans love the EC because, along with gerrymandering, it allows them to win elections with fewer votes. However, its even better because unlike gerrymandering it only works to their advantage.

holygod Never worked to Democrat's advantage? Well, hell, holygod, no wonder they're all bitching about it. My argument below in response to muert applies here, so I'll just refer you to that for my opinion on the matter.

muert Well, we just disagree on that then. If not for the EC, basically no one's votes would ultimately count unless they are in the highest population density areas. Civilizations tend to do that--have high concentrations of people in smaller areas. The influence of ideas in those areas would overwhelm the whole of the nation. As it is, a balance is established--not by simple vote, but a balance of opposing viewpoints. I don't think it can be argued that there is in fact balance in place. We've gone back and forth from liberal to conservative leadership for a long time. Neither can become supreme with the EC. But without it, the high population areas with more liberal ideas (in the instance of our nation) would of course multiply that much more quickly and opposing ideas would be squelched. But of course, this is what most liberals seem to want, so I can see why they complain about the electoral college.

That totals 34 million people. That is a little more than 10% of the population of the country.

The top 200 cities in the country have 83 million people total. That is only 25% of the vote.

Plus that is if you get EVERY vote in that city which would never happen.

"The influence of ideas in those areas"

So you think people in San Francisco and San Antonio have the same homogeny of ideas?

"but a balance of opposing viewpoints"

So in your opinion people in rural areas should have their vote count more to balance out the views of people in urban areas? What about black people? Should their vote be 6 times as powerful to balance out white people? Should the vote of a muslim be 80 times as powerful to balance out the vote of a Christian?

"why they complain about the electoral college."

Anybody with half a brain and no agenda has a problem with the EC. The only reason you like it is because it gives you an unfair advantage.

holygod It doesn't give me an unfair advantage, as I'm not running for president. As you've apparently forgotten, and as I have mentioned before, I have voted both Republican and Democrat in the past. You disagree with me, and that's fine. I believe the EC balances cultural, political and other ideas as spread across the whole of the country. And you can take a screenshot of this post if you want and save it for the day when the EC does benefit a winning candidate whom I did not vote for, and I'll be saying the same thing.

Also, are the populations you listed just for the cities themselves, or for the entire regions that surround them and are influenced heavily by the popular opinions of the city?

And finally, if you want to start pointing out "idiotic" statments, look at your last sentence. Seriously, are you going to tell me that neither you nor Liberals have an "Agenda"? You simply don't like the EC because it doesn't let the Liberal AGENDA dominate all aspects of American society. We still use the EC because it does in fact provide balance.

cjeffblanchr We use the EC for one simple reason, it was started 200 years ago when it made sense because of the lack of exposure people had with the candidates before television, radio, literacy rates, and national newspapers and now it is too hard to change especially when one party knows it gives them an advantage.

holygod having the head of government be of a different political party than the house majority is also a bad thing. You can end up with things like Obama's last 6 years, where the party opposing the president controls the legislature, and you have political gridlock and nothing but grandstanding. And the president has no political capital inside the opposing party, so he can't really force the issue.

Better for the party that wins the house to decide amongst themselves who gets to be top dog - then your top dog is going to have political sway in the house, and is more likely to be able to get things done.

5cats I don't think anyone is arguing that we should change the results of the election, just that we should look at the system and think about changing it before the next one. So that we agree on it ahead of time, before the game is over.

waldo863 Well yeah, if they want to change the rules? Change them! there's a clearly defined method to do so legally.But complaining afterwards that you were somehow wronged? By the way the rules are? That's just like a tantrum.

holygod It is designed specifically to do what it did: to give some power to the lower population states. To prevent what nearly happened: that a few big states dominate the rest. It isn't broken, this is what is supposed to happen.Don't like it? There's a clear and simple process to alter the Constitution: go for it!

muert Change for the NEXT game yes, not demanding the rules be retroactively applied to change the outcome of the completed game.And again: there's a clear process to do so: follow it and change the rules, go ahead! No one is stopping them.

But does it matter? I mean, only the popular vote should count? As in any other democracy?

On the paper, yes. But USA are not a single nation, it is a federation of states. And population is not balanced properly:

I agree, from a citizen perspective, it would be more democratic to simply count the votes nationally, moreover since you can win the presidential election with only 23% of the popular vote (50% of each small state), but it would negate the notion of federation *for the presidential election*.

You may argue that the federation is already well represented at the senate, but partisans of the Electoral college would answer that the population is already well represented at the House.

You may also say that it happened four times in history that this system "failed" the popular vote (Trump 2016, Bush 2000, Harrison 1888, Hayes 1876), so it should be changed. But (at least in 2000 and 2016), the popular vote only reflected the strategy of the elected presidents: target small, winnable, swing-states rather than go for the popular vote since the popular vote is useless in this election. The situation would have been very different with a popular vote in place, because the campaign would have been different, and maybe the exposed ideas too.

For instance, coal mining. Trump supported coal mining. Out of the 25 states with active coal mines in 2016, he won 20. 141 more electoral votes than Clinton in these states. The 25 "greenest" states according to Forbes were mostly won by Clinton (18 vs 7), but she only managed to get an advance of 129 electoral votes on these. It does not sum up to the official counts since arizona, montana, new mexico, colorado and virginia belong to both list. If we exclude these 5 states from the counts, Trump built an advance of 154 electoral votes in the non-green coal states, and Clinton only got an advance of 116 in the non-coal green states. This has been a key to win the election. Trump might have had a different stance on the question with a popular vote system. Or not. We'll never know.

We pay politicians to be our representatives in our governments. If they are not in the houses of power, they are not working for us. Get them off their damn stumps and keep them at their desks.

Election periods should be short and intense. Stop with this idiotic, drawn out process. All it does is cause money to be wasted on advertising and lobbyists.

Let's get more bang for our buck. 6 weeks is plenty long enough for an election period. Keep the incumbents at their desks. Political posturing should only be around for a short period, the rest of the time, GET BACK TO WORK!

punko I agree that the election periods should be short and intense. But one day voting makes it impossible for everyone to get to the polls. Some people are only free on certain days. The best thing would be for all states to go to a 100% mail in system. Washington State does this and it works out great. And yes there are checks. Every signature is checked against what is on file. Every name spelling is checked against what is on file. And every address is checked. I know because I interviewed for the part time job when I was off work for a bit.

punko If only. Getting rid of swing states means going to a popular vote. Which conservatives hate because it means the population they are appealing to are more widely dispersed, and take more effort to campaign to.

A more accurate Red vs Blue Map? Where is the 2016 cartogram map that shows the vote accurately by county and population? Link

But even that one is misleading as it only shows red or blue. The clearest way to see how the people voted is with a cartogram map that uses percentages of votes. This accurately shows that we are not an only left or right thinking country like the partisan media would like you to believe, but that we have a mixture of conservative and liberal ideals in each of us.

boredhuman I would say Trump played people's anger more affectively. Plus Clinton's deplorables comment was idiotic. You never attack the voters. Never. If she had not done that she would have won. I honestly believe that. She killed her election.

woodyville06 we thought he imploded 20 different times. Every time he opened his mouth I thought he was done. His voters simply did not care what he did or said. They were going to vote for him (or against her) no matter what.

markust123 Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote in 2000, so this isn't new. It's foolish to blame Clinton's loss on any one thing. I see a lot of factors: - Trump was greatly underestimated by everyone- Russia's meddling (both the effect and the meddling itself are unclear at this point, but the investigations will shed more light into it)- Trump Team's use of the internet and the news media

The grammar nazi in me wanted to correct "affectively," but in this context it might actually be right. :)

boredhuman you point only to external factors and completely ignore her many and significant flaws: unlikability, political baggage, crimimal investigation. She lost that election, it wasnt taken from her

boredhuman Affect and effect are the two words I have the hardest time with. Do you have a trick for using the right one? I’m wrapping up a book and these were the only two words I specifically had the editor check that they were being used correctly.

The grammar nazi in me would remove your unneeded “actually,” but that could just be because you grammar nazi’d me. Ha ha.

markust123muert got you covered for most cases. Here it's an adjective. As an adjective, 'affective' relates to emotions, which fits here. If you were referring to Trump's efficacy of using anger, then 'effectively' should be used. I used 'actually' "to insinuate that the following is either unusual or contrary to a norm or preceding assumption." These grammar wars are amusing.

markust123 I take Element's of Style as a good guide to writing; and "actually" is not actually in the book at all! I wonder how I should take that... All I know for sure is, Grammar Nazis always die in the end.

boredhuman Have you tried Grammarly professional? I ran it last week and it is incredible. You can't trust everything it finds but it is so much better than Word's suggestions. Especially at finding repeated words too close together. SmartEdit is also priceless.

"All I know for sure is, Grammar Nazis always die in the end."

That is the truth. Every time I've pointed out a problem in someone else's comment there is always a worse mistake in my comment. It is Murphy's law.

boredhuman, “Here's a simple test of the software's effect on meaning: pick your favorite literary passage and put it through the editing software, correcting all the suggestions.”

We’ll, yeah, that is going to be a mess. You always have to put reason into the suggestions. At least half of the comma suggestions were not needed on my last run through. A lot of the semicolons were needed so I reworded the sentence so we didn’t have to use them. Still, Grammarly is getting scary good at recognizing errors.

boredhuman, “Why learn proper grammar/word usage when AI can do it better?”

Totally understand but Grammarly is different because it tells you exactly why something is needed. It helps people improve their grammar knowledge. Here’s an example of a reason it found for a comma: “It appears you are missing a comma before the coordinating conjunction so in a compound sentence. Consider adding a comma.”

It’s not cheap so it is something I would only use at the end of a project.

markust123 I sometimes help my father edit his high energy physics research papers. Incidentally, he's working on employing machine learning to overcome saturation of Moore's law in search of exotic matter. Maybe he'll find the premium software useful, since English is his second language.

But "Russia meddling"? That's a myth, it's a joke now to even suggest this had something to do with the election.Trump won because Hillary was the worst candidate in US history. That's all there was to it. The MSM is doing cartwheels to try to distract everyone from that, but she's a career criminal with the morality of a snake, that's all.

boredhuman They spent a total of what, $200K? And some of that was attacking Trump. The DNC and Hillary spent $800 million dollars, or more, iirc. It's chump change, it was literally nothing.

Mueller has found jack squat after millions spent and an entire year: he actually found more evidence that Hillary and the DNC colluded with Russia! While breaking various election laws, of course. The Fusion thing was Hillary, not Trump, and it is what Spys do: they spy! You are shocked by this?

Yup, that's 'logic' there. Hillary in 2016 was the worst ever, due to her crimes and corruption which mostly happened between 2008-2016 (but there were plenty of crimes and corruption before that too). Therefor Obama must be the second worst! Logic! Or not...

News flash: she was a 'better' nominee in 2008 than 2016, but was still so flawed she was rejected. She spent the next 8 years rigging the process to buy her the nomination, and she almost lost it anyhow! To a communist who just joined the Democrats no less.

5cats"They spent a total of what, $200K? ... literally nothing." I could respect this position, if you were to claim Russia's meddling was minute and insignificant to the outcome of the election. In that case, I'd argue that we don't know enough to make the determination and would like to know more. However, you appear to be insisting it's all a myth.

"Mueller has found jack squat..."You've been missing from the IAB threads relating to the investigation here, here, and here. Four people having been charged as the result of the investigation; Flynn and Papadopoulos plead guilty. Maybe you missed it?

"The Fusion thing was Hillary, not Trump, and it is what Spys do: they spy! You are shocked by this?"I don't think you've read the dossier (link), otherwise you'd be writing how it's a complete fabrication by the British spy, Steele.

"Hillary in 2016 was the worst ever, due to her crimes and corruption which mostly happened between 2008-2016"Scandals? - yes. She was not charged with any crimes! We can go all attacks on Clinton if you like (with links). They may be shady, suspicious, yet under close scrutiny I suspect ALL attacks will be inconclusive.

"[Hillary] was a 'better' nominee in 2008 than 2016"That's debatable. In the years as a secretary of state she gained more experience and became a more seasoned politician. Then again she was getting older, and possibly had more baggage due to promises to donors (speculation).

Hillary's candidacy is old news though. The Steele dossier is in the news cycle now. Get ready to ignore its contents and blame Hillary for it.